“Oh, God.”
Gina shrugged, but let her hip and elbow brush Katie’s. Solace, delivered with the appearance of nonchalance. And then, watching Doctor S. seem to vanish between people, betrayed only be metallic gleams of light off slick hair. She could pick him out if she knew where to look, if she remembered to look for the tan jacket, the hair. Otherwise, her eyes seemed to slide off him. Creepy, she thought. He’s almost not really there.
And then she thought of something else. And maybe Melissa did too, because Melissa said, “Guys? What’s he doing at a crime scene?”
“Or accident scene,” Gina said, unwilling to invest in a murder without corroboration.
“Maybe he’s a gawker.”
“Ew.” Katie tugged Gina’s sleeve. “We should see if we can get closer. He probably won’t notice us.” And then she frowned. “How did he know about it?”
“Maybe he has a police scanner in his office?”
“So he’s a vulture.”
“Maybe he’s an investigator. You know. Secret, like.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Right. Our gay college prof is Spiderman.”
Gina snorted. “Hey. Everybody knows that Spidey and Peter Parker have a thing.”
Melissa hunched down so her head wouldn’t stick up so far above the crowd. Her hair was as bad as Doctor S.’s, and she didn’t have his knack for vanishing into the scenery. “Gina,” she said, “you go up, and tell us what’s going on.”
“I’ve seen dead people, chica.”
“You haven’t seen this one,” Melissa said. “Go on. It might be important.”
Gina shrugged, rolled her eyes, and started forward. And Melissa was right; a five foot tall Latina in gobs of eyeliner did, indeed, vanish into the crowd. “Criminal mastermind,” Melissa said.
Katie grinned, and didn’t argue.
This was the part of the job that Matthew liked least. There was no satisfaction in it, no resolution, no joy. The woman on the pavement was dead; face down, one arm twisted under her and the other outflung. She’d bounced, and she hadn’t ended up exactly where she’d hit. She’d been wearing a pink blouse. Someone in the crowd beside him giggled nervously.
Matthew figured she hadn’t jumped. He checked his wards— pass-unnoticed, which was not so strong as a pass-unseen, and considerably easier to maintain—and the glamours and ghosts that kept him unremarkable.
His hands still ached; he really wished somebody would come up with a system for detecting malevolent magic that didn’t leave him feeling like a B-movie bad guy was raking his fingerbones around with a chilled ice pick.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, buttoned the middle button on his jacket, and hit speed dial. He was one of five people who had the Promethean archmage’s reach-me-in-the-bathtub number; he didn’t abuse the privilege.
“Jane Andraste,” she said, starting to speak before the line connected. He hadn’t heard it ring on his end. “What’s going on?”
“Apparent suicide at Fifth and 68th.” He checked his watch. “It tickles. I’m on the scene and going to poke around a little. Are any of the responders our guys?”
“One second.” Her voice muffled as she asked someone a question; there was a very brief pause, and she was back on the line. “Marla says Marion Thornton is en route. Have you met her?”
“Socially.” By which he meant, at Promethean events and rituals. There were about two hundred Magi in the Greater New York area, and like Matthew, most of them held down two jobs: guardian of the iron world by night, teacher or artist or executive or civil servant by day.
They worked hard. But at least none of them had to worry about money. The Prometheus Club provided whatever it took to make ends meet. “I’ll look for her.”
“She’ll get you inside,” Jane said. “Any theories yet?”
Matthew crouched amid rubberneckers and bent his luck a little to keep from being stepped on. The crowd moved around him, but never quite squeezed him off-balance. Their shadows made it hard to see, but his fingers hovered a quarter-inch from a dime-sized stain on the pavement, and a chill slicked through his bones. “Not in a crowd,” he said, and pulled his hand back so he wouldn’t touch the drip accidentally. “Actually, tell Marion to process the inside scene on her own, would you? And not to touch anything moist with her bare hand, or even a glove if she can help it.”
“You have a secondary lead?”
“I think I have a trail.”
“Blood?”
It had a faint aroma, too, though he wouldn’t bend close. Cold stone, guano, moist rancid early mornings full of last winter’s rot. A spring and barnyard smell, with an underlying acridness that made his eyes water and his nose run. He didn’t wipe his tears; there was no way he was touching his face after being near this.
He dug in his pocket with his left hand, cradling the phone with the right. A moment’s exploration produced a steel disk the size of a silver dollar. He spat on the underside, balanced it like a miniature tabletop between his thumb and first two fingers, and then turned his hand over. A half-inch was as close as he dared.
He dropped the metal. It struck the sidewalk and bonded to the concrete with a hiss, sealing the stain away.
“Venom,” Matthew said. “I’ve marked it. You’ll need to send a containment team. I have to go.”
When he stood, he looked directly into the eyes of one of his giggly freshmen.
“Ms. Gomez,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. Sorry I can’t stay to chat.”
Gina was still stammering when she came back. “Did you see that? Did you see that?”
Katie hadn’t. “Just the backs of a bunch of tall people’s heads. What happened?”
“I was trying to stay away from him,” Gina said. “And he just appeared right beside me. Poof. Poof!”
“Or you weren’t looking where you were going,” Katie said, but Melissa was frowning. “Well?”
“He did just pop up out of nowhere,” Melissa said. “I was watching Gina, and he kind of … materialized beside her. Like he stood up all of a sudden.”
“He’s the devil.” Gina shook her head, but she sounded half-convinced.
Katie patted her on the shoulder, woven cotton rasping between her fingertips and Gina’s flesh. “He could have been tying his shoe.”
“Right,” Gina said, stepping out from under Katie’s hand. She pointed back to the crowd. “Then where did he go?”
Even glamoured, he couldn’t run from a murder scene. The magic relied on symbol and focus; if he broke that, he’d find himself stuck in a backlash that would make him the center of attention of every cop, Russian landlady, and wino for fifteen blocks. So instead he walked, fast, arms swinging freely, trying to look as if he was late getting back from a lunch date.
Following the smell of venom.
He found more droplets, widely spaced. In places, they had started to etch asphalt or concrete. Toxic waste indeed; it slowed him, because he had to pause to tag and seal each one.
How it could move unremarked through his city, he did not know. There were no crops here for its steps to blight nor wells for its breath to poison.